Nascent agricultural extensification and distinct household cultivation strategies supported first population centers in Neolithic southeastern Europe

Bibliographic Data

ID19492440
AuthorsPaul R Duffy (0000-0002-4026-2078, Institute of Archaeology of the Slovak Academy of Sciences), Kelly Reed (0000-0002-7460-8057, Oxford Brookes University), Pál Raczky (0000-0001-5556-723X, Eötvös Loránd University), Nándor Kalicz (Institute of Archaeology of the Slovak Academy of Sciences), Helmut Kroll (0000-0002-1867-2951, Institute of Archaeology of the Slovak Academy of Sciences), C A Makarewicz (0000-0002-1649-336X, Institute of Archaeology of the Slovak Academy of Sciences)
Year2026
Volume5
Publication date2026-06-17
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueFrontiers in Environmental Archaeology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2813-432X • E-ISSN: 2813-432X
PublisherFrontiers Media SA (PUBLISHER • CH)
DOI10.3389/fearc.2026.1820137
OpenAlexW7165005510
LanguageEN
References cited98

Late Neolithic settlements in southeastern Europe expanded to unprecedented sizes, potentially reshaping agricultural practices and household production strategies in response to increasing demographic and environmental constraints. On the Great Hungarian Plain, such population aggregation occurred within landscapes characterized by extensive wetlands and limited arable land, raising questions about how cultivation regimes were organized and whether expanding communities fostered emerging inequalities in access to agricultural resources. We address these issues at the large tell settlement of Berettyóújfalu–Herpály (Hungary) through an integrated analysis of over 33,000 charred archaeobotanical remains recovered from nine contemporaneous houses destroyed by fire in the mid-fifth millennium BCE. By combining functional weed ecology (Functional Interpretation of Botanical Surveys), cereal morphometrics, and stable carbon and nitrogen isotope measurements on individual grains ( n = 104), we reconstruct field conditions, manuring intensity, water availability, and labor investment at the household level. Emmer and einkorn wheats exhibit consistently high δ 1 5N values, indicating sustained manuring and broadly shared access to dung resources, while weed assemblages reveal reduced weeding intensity relative to earlier Neolithic garden-based cultivation systems. Barley, by contrast, displays lower nitrogen isotope values and weed communities characteristic of lower-input regimes, suggesting spatially differentiated crop management in which wheats were grown in more intensively tended plots and barley was grown in wetter or more distant fields. Variation among houses in charred seed isotope values and grain size points to emerging household-level differences in access to labor, land, or livestock, while mixed cropping of emmer and einkorn reflects risk-buffering strategies in a hydrologically constrained landscape. Overall, evidence from the settlement of Berettyóújfalu–Herpály suggests that early population centers on the Great Hungarian Plain maintained predominantly intensive cultivation while selectively experimenting with extensification at the scale of crops and households. Household variability did not translate into major disparities in stored crops, implying that cooperative mechanisms tempered the development of sustained inequality

Agriculture · Arable land · Crop · Cropping · Ditch · Human settlement · Paleoethnobotany · Population · Weed · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies · Geology and Paleoclimatology Research · Soil and Environmental Studies